(Animated #gif below may take a while to load, so please be patient until it full loads.) If you observe the rotation of the central text label below, do you see it turning smoothly all the time? Does it seem to “freeze” from time to time? If you manage to cover or isolate the surround (swaying dots), you can easily see that the text is really turning continuously!

One possible explanation of this phenomena states that “assuming a stable surround, our visual system probably uses the surround as a reference to measure motion of the included objects”.

I blocked out al the dots, seeing only the centre of the text, and it clearly stops for a moment.
So the freezing of the text is part of the animation, and not an optical illusion.

Funz

Well, at the end of the loop it does freeze for a moment :)

Not Telling

what?????????????????????????????/

R M Booker

It doesn’t just freeze, it goes backwards a bit too – while the central printing continues to go forward – though somewhat jerkily at times – weird!

Prettyprincess123

I dont get what you mean by: “assuming a stable surround, our visual system probably uses the surround as a reference to measure motion of the included objects“? Can someone (this includes Vurdlak) explain please?

dude

i dont get it. it seems to be turning smoothly and doesn’t seem to “freeze”

jackdee

To me it seems to stop everytime at the same place, in the beginning of the animation (when the text is horizontal) even if i manage to hide the dots.

Kevin D

It actually DOES stop. If you cover the middle you can see when it jumps. If you just look at the text, it stops when it gets to horizontal. If you isolate one dot, it jerks also. This is just a bad loop of the gif. There is no illusion here.

Nancy

even if I scrunch my hand up and look through so that I cannot see the dots it still appears to hesitate!

My explanation for the effect would be The “Law of Common Fate”, which is a well understood principle that the brain considers objects that move together to be connected. For a moment after the objects stop moving together the brain maintains the model of connectedness.

Babian Fohr

I couldnt see it at first. Then i started looking at the dots and then at the text. To state the effect when the dots and the text move in the same direction it looks like the text moves slower or freezes

richard marchese

I VIEW THE WORDS THROUGH A EMPTY TOILET PAPER TUBE.THE WORDS DID ROTATE BUT NOT AT A CONSTANT VELOCITY.THERE WERE BUMBS PRESENT IN ITS’ ROTATION WHICH CHANGED ITS VELOCITY AS WELL AS ITS’ ACCELERATION.